Synopsis
In a fractured post-apocalyptic world, a mysterious virus has transformed humanity into monstrous forms, but not all are affected equally. In adults, the infection erases identity and creates hostile creatures. In children, it manifests more softly, turning them into strange, almost cute monsters while preserving fragments of memory and an unexplainable desire to search for who they once were. Players choose one of five child characters, each with distinct stats that shape how they survive and interact with the world.
The game centers on a physical board of branching paths, where players move their tokens through abandoned locations and evolving narratives. At each position, players must choose how to respond: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. These choices determine the outcome of encounters drawn from cards, ranging from hidden traps to story fragments to battle arenas against powerful adult monsters. Some encounters can be faced alone, while others invite players to collaborate, encouraging strategic alliances in moments of high risk.
As players progress, they collect points across multiple categories, such as resources, defeated monsters, and keepsake items tied to fragments of the past. These are continuously logged into a companion computer app, which tracks how each player engages with the world. On the surface, the goal appears simple: accumulate points, grow stronger, and reach the end of the board.
However, the game’s true meaning unfolds only at its conclusion. When players reach the end, the app generates a personalized narrative reveal based on how their points are distributed and the character they chose. In this moment, they discover that they were once human children, and the ending reconstructs their lost identity, relationships, and memories. Different choices, strategies, and characters lead to entirely different revelations, reframing the journey not as a competition for points, but as a deeply personal story about identity, memory, and the quiet ways we try to find ourselves again.
Stories
Paths Through the Broken World:
The players will be one of 5 different child monsters: Bloop, Zoggy, Momo, Grip, and Tiki. Throughout the game, the child monsters will pass through terrains like collapsed buildings, cracked courtyards, and fallen buildings. They will witness scenes like a forest growing through the ruins, abandoned places, and cracked stone courtyards. Throughout their time in the ruins, the characters will be able to shape their own stories based on their own encounters.
The child monsters will be given specific powers at the beginning which will shape the way they are when they encounter danger. Specifically, this danger forms when they meet scary, creepy monsters including the following:
- the Hollowed, who is empty and soulless
- Griefborn, who is twisted from emotional residue in his past life
- Ruinwalkers, who wander endlessly through destroyed spaces
- The Unmade, form shifters who are incomplete
- Carrion Fathers, distorted parental figures
During these encounters, the child monster will have the choice to choose if they want to fight, fawn, flee, or freeze. Success will allow the child monsters to escape the world faster and will reveal the identity of the monster they defeated. On the other hand, failure will cause them to feel trapped and suffocated in this mysterious world. Child monsters may also be given the opportunity to receive power ups from helpers like Kindlings. These powerups include the following:
- A birthday candle, which indicates second chances
- Handwritten notes, or hints to defeat monsters
- Elastic Limbs, allowing them to move through spaces
- Scrap Armor, to reduce harm
- Trust tokens, or the ability for a child monster to work with other child monsters
The Remembrance:
At the end of their journey through the ruins, the child monsters will reach a place that feels different from all the others. It is quiet, empty, and still as its free from monsters, free from danger. Here, the keepsakes, powerups, and choices they made start to form fragments of a story.
As these fragments come together, the child monsters begin to remember. Small moments surface first: a familiar voice, a place that once felt like home, the feeling of holding someone’s hand. The world around them briefly transforms, no longer just ruins, but echoes of what once was. In this moment, each child monster realizes that they were once human, with a name, relationships, and a life that existed before the virus.
The final story that is revealed is shaped entirely by how the player moved through the world. The powerups they collected, the monsters they faced, and the ways they chose to respond all determine what kind of person they once were. Some may discover they were brave and protective, others that they were thoughtful and connected to others, and some that they were still searching for who they wanted to be.
When the memory fades, the ruins return. The child monsters remain changed, but no longer completely lost. Though they still exist in this fractured world, they now carry a quiet understanding of who they were. From that understanding, they will develop a sense of meaning that was never truly about escaping, but about remembering.
Gameplay
The game takes place on a physical board made up of branching paths that guide players through a fractured world of ruins. Each space on the board represents a different location like collapsed buildings, cracked courtyards, abandoned rooms. Players move their tokens forward step-by-step, choosing which paths to take. Some paths are safer but slower, while others are riskier and filled with more encounters. The board is designed to feel exploratory, allowing players to navigate the world while shaping their own journey through the ruins.
Before moving through the board, the child monsters will randomly be assigned skills through dice roles about how well they can fight, flee, fawn, and freeze. As the players move across the board through dice roles, players draw from a central deck of interaction cards. These cards are the core of gameplay and fall into two main types: monster encounters and power-ups. Monster cards introduce hostile creatures that players must confront. Each monster card includes a description, a challenge, and possible consequences based on how the player chooses to respond.
When a monster appears, the player must choose one of four actions: fight, fawn, flee, or freeze. Fighting involves using stats and collected power-ups to defeat the monster. Fawning allows the player to cooperate or emotionally connect to avoid harm. Freezing lets the player play dead to avoid immediate danger, often at the cost of skipping a turn. Fleeing allows the player to escape and move forward a limited number of spaces. Each choice carries different risks and rewards, and players must use all of these actions strategically throughout the game.
The second type of interaction card provides power-ups, which help players survive and progress. Power-ups can be used during encounters to influence outcomes and are essential for overcoming stronger monsters.
If a player successfully defeats a monster, its true identity is revealed. Specifically, it is shown as the human it once was, adding an emotional layer to the encounter. If the player fails, the monster remains unknown, and the player receives a penalty such as moving backward or losing resources. Over time, players accumulate power-ups and a record of their encounters, which shape both their progression on the board and their final story outcome.
At the end of the game, players input the cards they collected and the choices they made into a companion digital system. This system generates a personalized narrative that reveals who their character was before the apocalypse.
Tone
Our game takes inspiration from horror games, the occult, and cartoon media to create a melancholy yet curious tone that will inspire players to pursue the adventure and uncover their true identities. Because we are drawn to media that uses a combination of photography, sketch/drawing/art, and textiles, we plan to create a range of materials (both physical and digital) that imbue our game with emotional resonance and intrigue. Below, we outline the three main tonal themes we hope to develop throughout the game:
- Endearing/Sweet/Nostalgic
Our story will build emotional resonance, investment, and care for the characters as they embark on their trying journeys to find their true identities. We hope to build investment in the characters through playful aesthetic details, endearing descriptions, and adorable miniatures to represent the baby monsters.
- Haunting/Emotional/Mournful/Eerie
Our story follows monsters trying to deduce their previous identities after an apocalyptic nuclear disaster. The game will contain haunting descriptions of climate disaster, moral contention with themes of climate change and human destruction, and mournful elements related to the monsters’ discoveries of their previous lives. This tonal element will create an eerie, dystopian atmosphere.
- Surprising/Complex/Layered
The last element of the game’s tone will arise from the storytelling techniques we hope to use. We will begin by outlining a simple objective for the game that players will follow until it becomes clear from the cards drawn that the real objective is to uncover the stories of their pasts. This transition will come as a surprise, and our intention is that it will uncover the layered, complex backstories of the characters. The final reveal will be a story of loss, hope, family, and perseverance.
Setting
The game takes place in an abandoned town years after an apocalyptic event has decimated the town’s human population, leaving all of the buildings to decay over time until they are beyond recognition. Weeds rise up through cracks in the street, and vines crawl over the roofless husks that used to be buildings. Though much of the town is unrecognizable, objects can be found within buildings and lying on the ground outside, including sealed food items that did not decay and objects belonging to the town’s former residents, such as photographs, toys, dog collars, and articles of clothing.
The interactive parts of the setting will primarily focus on places and items associated with children and childhood. The town’s former elementary school will be a prominent location, as well as the houses of particular families, where toys and accessories belonging to the children there can be found.
Key Challenges for Design
Balancing gameplay and meaning
Players need to feel like earning points and progressing is genuinely fun and rewarding. If the final message undermines that too much, it can feel frustrating instead of meaningful. In a narrative-driven game, the points also need to support the story as opposed to act simply as vehicles for player advancement. Tying points and story beats together will be an interesting challenge.
Maintaining tone consistency between cute and unsettling
The game blends childlike, almost cute monster characters with a dark, post-apocalyptic world and emotionally heavy themes. The challenge is ensuring this contrast feels intentional and cohesive rather than confusing or jarring. If the tone leans too playful, the narrative impact may feel shallow. If it becomes too dark, it may lose the accessibility and uniqueness of the child’s perspective. The design must carefully balance visuals, writing, and interactions so that the experience remains emotionally resonant while still engaging and approachable.
Managing map and story complexity
In its current iteration, there are many paths to take and potential stories to be told based on player choices. Part of the iteration process will be focused on narrowing these down to find stories with the deepest emotional cores, and that are gripping to players. Branching paths can work well if they are scoped properly, and this is a risk the team is willing to take.
The issue of replayability
In early discussions, we have gone back and forth on two directions for the game: (1) Our game is meant to be a story with a gut punch twist that hits an emotional note but would fall flat on subsequent playthroughs with knowledge of that twist. (2) Our game has many narratives that lead to different experiences on different playthroughs. While the full game will likely aim at option 2, option 1 will be a good test of the mechanics and dynamics of the early build.
Key Challenges for Tech
Procedural narrative generation (AI / logic challenge)
The system must generate a personalized story from sparse, messy inputs (cards, actions, items). The challenge is producing narratives that are coherent, emotionally meaningful, and non-repetitive while still reflecting the player’s unique journey. This requires balancing structured templates with flexible generation so stories don’t feel generic or random.
Data Tracking
The game needs to track everything a player does and convert that into interpretable signals (e.g., bravery, empathy, avoidance). Designing a system that accurately logs, aggregates, and translates gameplay into narrative traits is complex, especially when players take unpredictable paths.
Physical-to-Digital Integration
Because the game uses a physical board and cards alongside a digital app, there is a challenge in ensuring smooth, accurate input of game data into the system. Players must be able to easily log cards, encounters, and outcomes without friction or errors. Poor integration could break immersion or lead to incorrect story generation, so the system must be intuitive, reliable, and fast.
Key Challenges for Art
Balancing the aesthetics of the game
One main challenge of our game is to balance the playful, nostalgic elements of our game with the more serious content areas in a way that is tasteful and considerate. We want players to have time to build up to the more emotionally significant content of the game, and we will aim to scaffold this through art that evolves alongside the gameplay through card, board, and graphic design. One inspiration for this style is the children’s book Knuffle Bunny that uses silly drawn characters on a realistic black and white photographed background:
Creating a cohesive design for multiple game elements
Our current conception of the game includes cards, a game board, mini playable monster figures, and an online resource for the final few steps of the game. Although this may very well change, the current concept will require significant design attention to ensure that all the elements communicate the right tone and to ensure they remain cohesive although they will all be different mediums and serve different purposes.
Representing 3D space on a board
The last difficulty will be to represent a complex 3D space using a 2D board. We are excited about this challenge because it will enable us to practice world building both physically and digitally, but it will definitely be difficult, especially if we decide to include key landmarks as part of the gameplay.
Tone References
We thought about several different references when constructing the game:
- Inside (video game): This game has a bleak tone and atmosphere and has a child as the protagonist. This gives a sense of vulnerability counter to “power fantasy” type games.
- We use elements from Sorry, a classic board game, in terms of advancing key pieces.
- Goosebumps has similar tone references as it invokes a spooky and surreal environment.
- Clue consists of physical pieces as part of board game play such as weapons and other artifacts.
- Horizon Zero Dawn features a post apocalyptic world with little explanation of how things came to be this way. This is related to pieces of “our world” that show a connection and are gradually revealed throughout the story.
- “There Will Come Soft Rains” is a short story by Ray Bradbury. It also focuses a post apocalypse in a futuristic world where automated home appliances continue to functions
- We adopt a similar map structure from Slay the Spire. Specifically, there are visible branching paths where the player can decide what kind of challenge they want to take on.
- WALL-E has cute and cartoonish characters amid a bleak setting (a lot like the baby monsters in our game)
Who is This For
The target audience is people aged 14+ who are drawn to scary, darker, or more introspective experiences. This includes teens who enjoy story-driven games with psychological tension. The game also appeals to those who like strategy, chance, and personal storytelling. The post-apocalyptic setting makes it best suited for players who are comfortable engaging with unsettling themes and moral ambiguity.
Siya: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/04/30/checkpoint-1-individual-deliverable-siya/
Jolie: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/04/30/jolie-checkpoint-1-concept-doc-edith-finch-style/
Dom: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/04/30/p2-inspiration/
Kwasi: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/05/04/p2-individual-concept-doc-2/
Sosi: https://mechanicsofmagic.com/2026/05/04/sosi-day-individual-concept-ideation/
